


Smoke on the Water

by Not_So_Secretly_a_Spaceship



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agent Rose Tyler, Agents are secretly children, BAMF Rose Tyler, Bad Wolf as a separate entity to Rose Tyler, Bad Wolf has a wicked sense of humour, But mostly fluffy bunnies, Caffeine Addiction, Cuddly Clint Barton, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Humour, It's a Love Story Just Not Quite What You Expect, Love, M/M, More tags to come!, Nick Fury doesn't want to know, Not always fluffy bunnies, Phil Coulson has the Aplomb of God, Prank Wars, Pre-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., You're going to want your own Clint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-07-15 18:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 68
Words: 15,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7234483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_So_Secretly_a_Spaceship/pseuds/Not_So_Secretly_a_Spaceship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a cold day in hell when Rose Tyler's vortex manipulator finally kicks the bucket.  It's a cold day in the helicarrier when Nick Fury receives an unexpected guest.<br/>(Cross-posted from FF.net)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted from FF.net while procrastinating studying. Boom.

It is a cold day in hell when Rose Tyler's vortex manipulator finally kicks the bucket. She'd managed to hide in a water closet – an actual water closet, not one of those closets where you put your hot water cylinder, but a closet filled with water – and hold her breath for long enough to grab some coordinates and launch into the abyss.

It hadn't worked out well, for herself or her vortex manipulator. The howling chasm, the unadulterated stream of time had crept around the manipulator's shields. Peeled back her skin, flayed the flesh, shunted down synapses and screamed through her spinal fluid. Took her apart. Put her back together.

Then dumped her head-first into a pile of snow on a desolate plane of ice.

Her fingers clench around frozen flakes, nerve endings hissing as fire curdles her insides and ice caresses her skin. Deep within her, something gold, something glorious, raises its head and snarls, gut deep and terrifying and wonderful to the edges of time and space. It unfurls as her head rises from the slurry, eyes dripping light and teeth flashing.

She disappears without a sound.


	2. Chapter 2

It's a cold day in the helicarrier when Nick Fury receives an unexpected guest. She appears, quite suddenly, in the corner of his office. "How did you get in here," he says. It is not a query, it is a demand, and his voice cracks with it. But she turns, slowly, gold trickling down her face and she is anything but human.

"They're coming, Nick," she purrs and her voice catches in his throat, stealing his breath with surprise. "You should probably run." Her lips pull back from pearl teeth. He stands, fingers braced on the top of his desk.

"Not something I'm good at."

Her mouth tips into a smile, eyes looking at him, through him, past him and into forever. She leaves as sudden and noiselessly as she arrived. "I know," her voice brushes against his cheek.


	3. Chapter 3

When Rose Tyler first appears on SHIELD's radar, she is an enigma wrapped in a quandry in a file on Agent Coulson's desk. She is a young English woman with no past and a peculiar future. She has managed to be on-site for no less than three 0-8-4s. Always in the background. The shop staff here. A waitress in a lonely diner there. Out of place with her accent and her smile, but unobtrusive. Always showed just the right amount of hysteria. Always disappeared afterwards.

He is tasked with find out who she is. Fortunately, this time, she is working as a barista at a boutique coffee shop in down town New York. She tends to return to cafes in her 'downtime' between 0-8-4s.

He stops by on his way to work that morning. A shot of the house blend topped with cream – a remnant of his days in Brazil. She smiles at him around the coffee machine, tongue between teeth and eyes dancing like he is her personal joke. Their fingers brush as she passes him the coffee and the mask falls from her eyes. He is not quite sure what he's looking at anymore, and the hairs rise on the back of his neck, but the look is gone in a flash and she is once more a young woman with a full smile and twinkling eyes.

He drinks his coffee on his way to work. It's damn good coffee.


	4. Chapter 4

Phil goes to that coffee shop every morning for the next two weeks. The file on one Rose Tyler, age unknown, grows.

The first time he returns, she beams at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. "Didja like i' then?" she asks, dropping her consonants like they're going out of fashion. His second coffee is, unbelievably, better than the first.

Despite being delightfully chatty she is also incredibly vague about her past. "Oh, travelled here and there, bit of everywhere," she says with a grin. He is quite sure she knows his game and plays along, for a little while at least. She tells him of Scotland and a beautiful castle she stayed in once. She tells him she once managed to escape a Bedouin, to whom she had accidentally become betrothed, by stealing away with two of his prize camels in the night after so much feasting she could barely roll herself out of her tent.

All her stories make their way into the file on his desk. None of them quite add up.


	5. Chapter 5

It is a month before Christmas and it's getting damn cold in New York. Phil can see his breath on the air as he makes his way to the coffee shop. Rose is jumping up and down behind the coffee machine, blowing on chapped fingers. "'Minds me a bit o' London," she says, starting up his coffee. The cashier girl takes the next customer's order.

Before Phil can even contemplate pulling out his hidden firearm, Rose has moved between the cashier girl and the customer / armed robber. His arm is promptly broken and gun removed, full clip skittering across the counter top and loaded bullet popping out to join its compatriots on the counter.

He hands her a card with a phone number and an address on it. "Come by for a job interview," he says as she stuffs it in her pants pocket. He disappears out the door before the police can arrive. She slips out the back while the cashier girl sobs into a handsome officer's arms.


	6. Chapter 6

She turns up the next morning, gloved fingers shoved into the pockets of an oversized full-length brown jacket. Her hair is contained by a multi-coloured knit beanie and matching scarf. Her nose is pink. Her smile is broad.

Phil is surprised to see her.

"Well I just couldn' help myself, what with you bein' all mysterious an' all," she explains, rotating her shoulders in a peculiar circular shrug.

"Would you like to work for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division?" he asks. She pauses her movement and looks at him quizzically. Twiddles with the edges of her sleeves.

"Sure, should be interesting for a while," she says.


	7. Chapter 7

She annihilates every endurance test they throw at her. Oh she never beats time scores, nor does she show any super-human strength, but she completes everything _and then goes for more_. The testers are a mixture of amazed and horrified. Phil is smug.

Her physical, oddly after the first round of basic endurance, begins normally enough. She is asked to strip to her underclothes for a complete examination.

Scars pucker in a horrific 'Y' from her collarbones to her sternum, descending down the valley between her breasts to continue to her navel. It then splits once more to curve down to her hips. Her spine is not a sensual display of curves and dips but rather a jagged mound of white tissue, running from beneath her hair right down to below the line of her underpants.

She watches them, eyes shuttered and dark. Quiet judgement in the neutral line of her shoulders. It takes longer for the doctor to recover.

"How did you get them?" Phil asks.

"Experiments," she replies.


	8. Chapter 8

They poke her and prod her and she takes it all with great dignity. They listen to her heart and her lungs, test her patellar reflex and her ankle jerk reflex. Pupil response to light, everything they can think of. She remains taciturn about the experiments undertaken on her.

Then they take her blood, and as they're putting a plaster on, her skin heals up. She catches the eyes of each person in the room in turn. "Now you know why," she says, voice a low purr that spoke of deadly promises.

"Not here," he replies, and he means it.

"Not while you live," she says, eyes flashing gold as the light catches them.


	9. Chapter 9

It is two weeks to Christmas and Phil walks into his office, a beautiful shot of espresso topped with whipped cream made courtesy of his new ward, Rose Tyler.

"What is this?" he asks, blinking at the tinsel edging almost every surface, red baubles dangling from the ceiling. A sprig of holly hangs on the back of his screen.

"Christmas decorations!" Rose yells from her desk part-way down the hall. "You're welcome!"

He places his coffee on his desk and begins to clear the tinsel and take down the baubles.

The next day he walks into his office and a proximity bomb explodes at chest height, decorating his suit with tiny red and green and silver snowflakes. When the decorations return, he does not remove them. He stops wearing that suit after Agent Hill comments on the colourful trail he leaves behind him two months later.


	10. Chapter 10

Phil learns that Rose Tyler is a crack shot. It comes rather suddenly, in the form of an adhesive NERF bullet to the middle of his forehead. She giggles from the darkness beneath her desk. He signs her up for marksman training.

And adds another pile of reports for her to review into her in-tray. The punishment must suit the crime, after all.

She enacts her revenge by using decaf in his morning espresso shots.


	11. Chapter 11

"How old are you?" Phil asks one day as he drops off more reports. She looks up and grins.

"Don't you know it's rude to ask a lady her age?" she replies glibly. Her tongue peaks out between her teeth as she grins him down. He returns to his office, thwarted by his ward's cheerfully secretive manner.

She tells him on their second mission, when all has gone to shit and she is applying a brutal tourniquet to his leg to slow the bleeding from the hole in his thigh, there courtesy of an unexpected bullet. "If I still had my vortex manipulator, I could tell you my exact age. I stopped counting after a while, but I think I'm closing in on half a millennia." She says it in part apology, part distraction as she yanks the tourniquet – her belt – tight enough over upper his thigh to slow the blood chugging through his femoral artery and onto the floor.

"That explains a lot," he grits out around her glove, which she had whipped off and shoved in his mouth so he didn't destroy his teeth. Her mouth twitches into a grim smile.

"You don't get to my age without learning a few things in the meantime. Now, let's get to evac. Stetson's cleaned up." She hoists him up and together they hobble out of the 'abandoned' warehouse in the boonsticks.


	12. Chapter 12

She's also a speed demon. Their third mission evac gets fucked to high hell. There's a motorbike, sleek and demonic, lying in wait in the garage. Rose whistles her appreciation, fingers tracing the line of the seat. She looks at Phil with a wicked grin. "You're going to want to hold on tight," she says as she straddles the bike. Phil eyes it warily before hopping up behind her and wrapping his arms around her stomach.

She kicks off the stand, starts the engine and revs it. It _howls_. A somewhat more tentative throttle has them moving but as soon as they're out the garage door, she opens up and suddenly Phil can't breathe and it's all he can do to cling to her and press his face into her back. She howls back at the bike, into the wind, full of euphoria.

When they finally stop and he climbs off the back, his knees are jelly and his stomach is still somewhere back in that garage. Her hair is a riot about her head and her eyes are sparkling. She is more alive than he has ever seen her.


	13. Chapter 13

Rose is still an enigma wrapped in a quandry in a series of files in Agent Coulson's desk. Every mention gets an entry. Every adventure, every person. She is frustratingly vague on any details. There are never any names – places or otherwise. No, she is far too careful for that.

He also doesn't believe that she's spent all her time on Earth. She'd have hit their radar a lot sooner otherwise.

So, under guise of celebrating a successful mission (with no death-defying motorbike escapes or holes through various body parts), Phil takes Rose to the SHIELD bar and buys her a drink. She grins, flashing teeth, but accepts a neat top shelf whiskey.

They match each other, drink for drink until it devolves to shots, and they continue. Phil gushes over his love of the old-style Corvettes. Rose gushes over her love of the old Jaguar E-types. They bond over classic cars until neither of them can see straight, and Phil completely forgets he was going to pump her for information while she was drunk.

He walks into work the next morning looking like death warmed up. Rose grins brightly at him and puts a mug into one hand, lifting his other hand up and wrapping it around the warm cup. "It's a hangover cure I picked up," she says. "I don't need them anymore, but everyone who drinks with me does."

When he can write without wanting to split his own head open, that tidbit gets added to her file.


	14. Chapter 14

One morning, Rose presses a new cup into his hands, filled with his morning coffee. It says "World's Best Boss" in pink sparkly paint.

It spends its time in the most prominent position on his desk. Rose smiles every time she sees it.


	15. Chapter 15

She comes in wearing a blue suit and converse shoes. She wears them all week, eyes distant. Her mouth, so generous with its smiles, is less so in blue.

"Is there an occasion?" Phil eventually asks on the third day. She pauses in organising the paginated report (with exhibits) for binding. Looks at him levelly. Never having been one to fidget, Phil had never understood the compulsion. Until now, honey-brown eyes dissecting him. He resists until her eyes leave him.

"Let's go get a drink," she says and sets the report to one side.

It is many drinks later before she begins to talk. "I'm not from here," she mumbles before throwing back a shot of something sweet and strong. Phil swears the bartender is just making this shit up as they drink.

"I gathered that," Phil replies. She levels another look at him and he almost shrinks back into himself. Instead he waits her out.

"This isn't my universe," she continues. Phil wisely keeps silent. "Either of them." She takes another shot, Phil matches her. "I wear this suit because this is the week it all happened. The day I died, the day I was stranded. The day we returned. The day a great man was killed and I became a test subject for the institution I helped develop."

Phil remains quiet a she expunges, words tripping over one another. Tells him about the man – alien – known only as the Doctor. How they had travelled through time and space, and how at the last, she was stranded on the wrong side of an inter-dimensional rift. How she went back, saved him, and was deposited back once more with a … clone … of the man she loved. A truly mortal one, with a human life-span.

The day they realised she wasn't aging. The day she left Torchwood to convalesce with her husband, to enjoy all the time she had with him with the knowledge that she would outlive him by centuries.

The day Torchwood reclaimed her and shot him as he sought to protect her from them.

The alcohol flows to temper the horrors that tumble from her lips. The live autopsies. How they cracked open her rib cage and kept it open for months, removing portions of her bone, liver, one of her lungs, to admire their regrowth. How they removed half of her spinal chord and kept that bare to the elements while it grew back over agonising years. She tells him that, when they finally closed her up, they had to resect the edges of her skin to force them to heal together.

Then she tells him how, after fifteen years, one tiny woman helped her to escape, at the cost of her own life. Smuggled in the suit and jacket, the vortex manipulator she had hidden before her capture.

"This was his suit," she says quietly. "I had it altered to fit, he was a beanpole and a half."

Phil just stares at her. "I think we need some more to drink." She laughs, finally, sadly, but knocks her shot glass with his and downs it in tandem.


	16. Chapter 16

She is a changed woman in the weeks following their talk, as though speaking of the horrors loosened their hold on her.

She is, if anything, more cheeky. She tinkers. The coffee machine starts making odd noises when particular people approach it. The toaster gains what looks like a bastard child between an eggbeater and a wireless antennae that occasionally twirls. No one is quite sure what it does, but it still produces toast, so people leave it be.

Her tales take on a whole new meaning, and have a whole new level of detail.

"Elves," she says one morning. "Not even kidding, legit wood elves, like Lord of the Rings, yeh?" She laughs at Phil's slightly stunned look. In his defence, this was blurted while she passes him his morning coffee. "They even lived in trees, it was fantastic. Oh it was so beautiful. They'd made tiny solar emitters to light up their paths into the trees. Never did get to take one of them apart, I'd have loved to see how they managed to make the batteries _so tiny_." She flops into her desk chair and spins.

"Why don't you go back?" he asks. She stops her spinning abruptly and levels That Look at him, the one where he can't possibly fathom the thoughts swirling behind her gold-flecked eyes. She shrugs and goes back to twizzling the chair around.

"Don't got a vortex manipulator anymore," she replies simply.

"Couldn't you make one?" he pursues. She shakes her head with a sad grin.

"Nope, I need a intra-dimensional inverted expander, and a extra-dimensional recombobulator, not to mention an ionic reconstitution sprogget," she rattles, waving her finger in the air as she explains. He's not even sure if they're real things. "And you can only get them at the Kofteshkin markets in thirty fifteen, or at the -" she makes a guttural noise at the back of her throat that sounds like she is hawking up phlegm "- markets, and they only happen once every few years on the fifteenth Enday of the year, and it's _always_ in a different city." She sighs, tipping her head back.

"Nae matter," she says, bracing herself forward and onto her desk. "I'm quite enjoying a bit of stability in my life." She beams at Phil and he totters off, dismissed, with his cup of sweet, sweet caffeinated goodness.

It all goes into the file.

It's not until a few weeks and many more puzzling conversations later that he realises she never told him how she got _here_.


	17. Chapter 17

The first time she changes, she well and truly scares the shit out of everyone. They are sweeping a terrorist cell with purported links to Baron von Trapp, the great grandson of Corvette Captain Georg Johannes von Trapp of World War I fame, a man who is suspected of ensuring various cells acquire technology they should not have.

One moment she is there, the next she is gone and _no one saw her move_. A howl unfurls from the bowels of the facility that terrifies them. His feet are encased by fear, clawing up his spine, spinning his brain. The noise cuts off and he can move again, and move he does, swiftly and silently.

They meet no one. There are no bodies.

Until they reach a cavernous room at the heart of the facility. Auric vapour drips from the woman in the centre of the room, slinking across the floor, coiling about the bars of cages and smoothing up the skeletal legs of young girls within. Ochre tangles through curls and down her back. She stands resolute. Before her are the only bodies they ever find, brains gracing the stone walls behind them.

Her guns are still holstered.

Agent Coulson gestures to the other three agents to tend to the cages, to wade through the honeyed mist and rescue the children. He steps towards the dripping, trickling, terrifying figure.

She turns around and her eyes, fire and rage and unmercifully inhuman, bore into his.

"Who are you?" he asks.

"I am Bad Wolf," the words fall from her lips and his spine cramps in dread. He swallows, chokes on his own voice.

"Where are the other men?" he braves, indicating the death on the walls.

"Gone." Her voice snaps across his skin, crackles into his ears. She turns back and flicks her fingers in distaste, sparks rising from the circling mist to devour the bodies until the only note of their passing is the brain globlets trickling down the wall.

She flickers from existence before he can reach for her.


	18. Chapter 18

Rose Tyler slinks into Phil's office two days later and closes the door.

"What the hell was that?" he asks as she perches on the edge of the chair, facing him with her hands folded neatly in her lap. As though she is not multiple times older than he, but rather a defiant child expecting a scolding. She purses her lips. Phil collapses in his chair and runs a hand down his face.

"That is what I am," she says. She does not elaborate.

" _What_ was that?" he pushes. Her eyes are shuttered when she looks at him.

"What I am," she replies, voice oh so carefully light.

"Can you control it?" he asks instead.

"To an extent."

"Are you a threat?"

"No more or less than you." Her eyes flick away from him, staring at a point over his shoulder. Closing herself off from him as surely as if she'd slammed a door in his face.

"Rose," he says, trying to re-establish that vital connection, to catch her eyes. It works. Her gold-flecked eyes twitch back to him. "Why didn't you raise this earlier?"

Her grin is lopsided and wry. "I trust you, Phil," she says. "And I trust that you will _always_ do the right thing. I don't trust SHIELD." Her fingers brush against her sternum, and his eyes are drawn there, remembering what lies beneath the cloth. "I know about the file." His eyes widen for a moment before his Agent face is back on. Her eyes turn soft and she cocks her head to one side. "Oh relax, it's not like I sneaked a peak, nor is it entirely surprising. I've had worse."

"I still have to report this, you know."

"I'm surprised you haven't already."

"I wanted to wait for you to touch base first, I'm holding the whole team's reports back. There will be an interrogation."

"I expect so."

Phil almost pinches the bridge of his nose. It is a very near thing. Instead he leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers. "I will submit the reports now. Because of the nature of the reports, they'll be processed immediately. I suspect you will be called in within a few hours. I'd appreciate it if you would spend the next few hours mocking up an outline of your own report." She nods and stands to leave.

"Thank you for saving the girls," he says, and she pauses, fingers tracing the door handle. "They said the men were lining up to shoot them before you arrived."

She flashes a smile over her shoulder, all tooth and fury. "That's why I did it." She opens the door and slips out.


	19. Chapter 19

It doesn't end there. They stare at her from the other side of one-way glass, looking into an interrogation chamber. She sits, hands cupped in her lap, chin tipped high and eyes flashing. Director Fury had her escourted there. She hasn't moved in over two hours but to blink. Director Fury is beginning to fidget.

Phil is past the fidgeting stage, though you would not know it to look at him.

She pours to her feet, hands still clasped demurely in front. Steps up to the mirror. Dead in front of the director. Her eyes trickle gold dust and her mouth pours honey. "You are at a crossroads," she purrs, schism in her vocal chords. Near every hair on Phil's body leaps to attention. Judging by the tightness around the director's jaw, he is not immune either. "You can ask the question, and I will leave." Her eyes meet Phil's across the glass. "Or you can hold your curiosity, and I will remain."

The eyes of predatory gold circle back to Director Fury. They wait.

He steps from the viewing room. Unlocks the door to Rose Tyler. Stares impassively at her as she leaves the room with honey coloured eyes, giving him a nod as she brushes past him.

He returns to the viewing room. Stands next to Phil in silence for some time, staring at the empty chair and open door. "I'd rather have her on our side," he finally says.

"I think that is a wise move," Phil replies.

The reports of The Incident are sealed. No one speaks of it again.


	20. Chapter 20

Her chair dings. Then it howls and the contraption on top spins. She rockets from it, slapping a big blue button she'd installed into the arm last week. She runs out the door with her cry of "be back soon!" following after her.

She tumbles back in three days later, impeccably dressed in a black suit, hair running riot and eyes glowing. She bounces on the balls of her feet and can't seem to stop smiling.

"What was that?" Phil asks.

"False alarm," she replies, spinning her chair around before plopping herself into it as though she never left.

"What took you so long?"

"I may have accidentally appeared in New Zealand in my excitement," she says, smile taking over and teeth shining.

"That's impressive," Phil says, genuinely impressed.

"But I couldn't figure out how to get it going again, so I had to fly economy back." She laughs. "Longest haul I've ever done, I'll try to avoid that in the future."

"Probably a good idea," Phil replies mildly, returning to his office.


	21. Chapter 21

Phil is staring down the shaft of an arrow. Hawkeye is staring down the barrel of a gun. Neither twitch.

Until the arrowhead splinters into gold dust and peels away, creeping up the shaft to devour the fletching. Hawkeye swears and throws the disintegrating bow away from him before it reaches his fingers.

She appears, glitter dripping from her eyes and mouth. Sparks alight in her hair. "Bring him in." The voice that trickles from her tongue is echoed by a howling tempest.

Hawkeye throws his hands towards Phil, wrists bared for cuffs. They're clapped on and he's taken away.

When Phil turns to Rose, her eyes are brown again. She smiles, a sad little smile, and leads him back to their transport.


	22. Chapter 22

"Why did we bring him in?" Phil asks. They stand on the other side of the one-way glass, watching Hawkeye sprawling in the cell's chair. Gilt tendrils spiral out from her iris.

"This is where he needs to be," she replies. Her words glitter as they pass her lips.

"Why?" he pushes.

"Who he was, who he is, and who he will be. What he will do, for himself and for SHIELD, plays an important role in what happens." Rose shrugs and turns to him, lopsided grin peculiar with her shining eyes. "You'll see."

"Then I suppose I'll apply to be his handler." Phil sighs. Turns back to the man fidgeting in the cell. Rose nods. Laughs, claps a hand on his shoulder.

"Good luck," she says, eyes once more ochre, before leaving him to his ponderings.


	23. Chapter 23

Rose is twitchy. She frowns at her tea. Sips it. Puts the mug back on her desk. Adjusts the direction of the handle.

She frowns at her computer. Possibly even swears under her breath, though everyone is too polite to comment.

She frowns at Agent Latimer when he hands her an intel report she'd been waiting on for the situation brewing in Baghdad.

She _glares_ at the report like it had urinated in her tea.

She lasts until lunch time. "Phil," she says, fingers tapping on the door to his office. He looks up from the dossier. Blinks.

"I'll get my coat," he replies after a moment, snapping the folder shut and rising from his desk.

They drink until her fingers stop rapping out a manic pattern on her knee, arm, thigh, stool, bar. They drink until her eyes stop chasing the room, until the sense of something invasive, something crawling up her spine and screaming at her to move, do _something_ , slides away into the soothing warmth of drunkenness and good company.

"This is the longest I've stayed in one place," she admits, tipping her shot glass at him and frowning when the liquid sloshes over her fingers.

"Would a change of scenery help?" Phil asks, less drunk than he acts. He knows how to drink with Rose, now. She is more than a little grateful for it.

"Yeah," she says, eyes glazing into the middle distance, staring at his shoulder, staring at nothing. "I spent four months with a Dhrikaka tribe on Xinat Five, but otherwise it was 'get in, fix stuff, get out' or supply runs. I'd maybe stay a week in a quiet city here and there, just taking in the sights." She looks at him again, eyes warmed by liquor. He smiles back.

The next morning four thick folders are perched on her desk. She hands Phil his morning shot of espresso with cream. Raises an eyebrow at him. He nods to her desk.

"Pick one," he says.

They are all suspected 0-8-4s. One in Dallas, one in Fiji, another in Capetown. She picks the fourth.

"Ah, New Zealand. Nice choice," he comments. She smiles, tongue in teeth, and goes back to her reading.

She ships out the next day.


	24. Chapter 24

Phil returns to the Triskellion for a meeting with Director Fury, amongst others. He takes the opportunity to touch base with Steve and Quinn in R&D, to sit and smile to himself as they talk excitedly over one another, words tumbling in their haste to explain themselves.

From what he can understand, and he readily admits to himself that he cannot follow them _entirely_ , they're working on a new fabric that doubles as a computer and touch screen.

Preliminary work has been positive. There was something about quantum computing to allow for the flexibility of cloth, something else about the screen being a fine electrical charge stimulating pigment in the cloth for a screen – they wouldn't have multiple colours _yet_ , but it was still a work in progress.

"Agent Coulson," a finely heeled woman calls from the door. She flips her hair over one shoulder. Ah, Fury's new secretary, pilfered from an English bureaucrat if he remembers correctly. "Director Fury would like to see you now, if you would kindly follow me."

So he makes his excuses to Steve and Quinn, both of whom are too busy staring at the rather beautiful young woman as she sashays away to pay attention to him. Phil sighs and follows her.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," he says, pausing for her to fill her name in. She looks up from her thumbs flying across the blackberry keyboard.

"Yes, I'm sure," she replies, and looks back down to her phone, steering him unerringly towards the offices of the upper echelons.

"How are you enjoying yourself at SHIELD?" Phil continues.

"Quite." This time she doesn't look up from her phone.

The sterile click of her heels never falter. She opens the door for him and ushers him into Fury's office. All without looking up from the phone.

"I'm impressed," Phil tells Fury when the door snicks shut. Fury raises an eyebrow. "Your new secretary." Fury cracks a smile. It is not a pleasant one.

"Nearly caused a diplomatic incident recruiting her," he says, voice thick with amusement and smugness. It is Phil's turn to raise an eyebrow, taking the seat in front of Fury's utterly pretentious desk. Crosses one leg over the other. Relaxes back into the chair.

"Now if you'd kindly explain -"

A drumbeat starts up from Phil's coat pocket. Followed promptly by a cheery sax and trumpets and the dawning realisation that _oh fuck_ that's his _phone_. Going off. In Director Fury's office. While said Director Fury watches him with mingling amusement and irritation, eyebrow crawling higher up his forehead.

_Going loco down in Acapulco  
_ _If you stay too long  
_ _Yes, you'll be going loco down in Acapulco  
_ _The magic down there is so strong_

It's a text message. From a cheerful little blonde, currently half way around the world. ' _ **SAY HI TO BOSS FOR ME!**_ '

Phil snorts and shows it to Fury, who shakes his head.

"Still rather have her on our side?" Phil asks, tongue in cheek.


	25. Chapter 25

Rose answers the phone after two rings.

"Director Fury is still wondering why we haven't terminated you," Phil says. She laughs, deep and from the belly, and he knows her head is thrown back and her curls are bouncing with her mirth. He cannot help but smile. "Would you care to tell me how you managed to hack into my phone from a cave half way around the world to change your text tone to send me a text during a meeting you shouldn't have even known about?"

She just laughs harder. "Spoilers!" she manages to wheeze out after some time. She takes a few deep breaths, wheezes a few more times, makes a few 'wooooo' sounds.

"Okay, sorry about that, I'm good, we're good." She pauses, voice still choked in amusement. "So how was your day?" she asks.

"Suitably amusing, thank you," Phil replies. "How are you finding New Zealand?"

"Oh, Phil, it's glorious," she says, and he can hear the wistful wonder in her voice. "I can see the stars from my deck, the _stars_ , Phil. The _whole_ milky way." She heaves a sigh. "This is exactly what I needed."

"I know." He is smug.

"No sign of anything yet, though. I may be here for a while," she says. She doesn't say thank you.

In truth, she doesn't need to.

"Stay as long as you need," he says. "Let me know how it goes." He doesn't say you're welcome. He doesn't need to.

He can hear the smile in her voice, joy uncontainable. "I will, now get back to Fury before he has an aneurysm. Let him know his phone is next." The line goes dead.

Phil raises an eyebrow. He ducks back into Nick's office. "Might want to keep an eye on your phone, sir," he says. Shuts the door and darts out, the sound of vehement swearing on his heels.


	26. Chapter 26

Rose Tyler, temporarily renamed Jane Smith, consulting spelunking entomologist from Oxford, sprawls in the grass and stares up at the sky. She breathes in, two, three, out, two, three, in, two, three, out, two, three. Tilts her hips to allow her spine to relax into the soil.

The stars wink at her.

Alone beneath the universe, her brain unfurls.

Rustling leaves whisper of springs been and gone and winters to suffer. A kiwi shrieks of a time before man, of a time when their calls will be no more. The ground rumbles of great beasts long dead in oceans long dried, of water and ice and fire and change.

She sees, feels, lives the life, death of protozoans, amoeba, zooid, there and gone with the passing of her breath. Plunges deep into ancient waters with ammonites and mosasaurs. Runs with the giant moa, dodges the sharp talons of the great haast eagle.

The bones of the departed sing her their stories and, vertebrae crushed to the loam, she listens.


	27. Chapter 27

Rose explodes back into Phil's life one warm Tuesday morning. She is a whirlwind of blonde curls and laughter as she spins into the office, wrapping Phil up in a hug. She plants a kiss on his forehead.

He has never truly felt her age until her lips drop to his crown. He is but a child.

She releases him and swings away to make him a coffee before he can feel awkward about it.

Rose perches on the chair across Phil's desk moments later, his 'World's Best Boss' mug filled with the most perfect coffee he has ever tasted.

The coffee he has been making himself never tastes as good as what Rose makes. He wonders if she puts something extra in it.

She smiles at him. Hands him a folder. "My report," she says. "It was a false positive."

Phil raises an eyebrow as he takes the file. She raises her eyebrow in return and continues to grin.

"I'll just let you read that in peace, shall I?" She pokes her tongue out between her teeth and nips out the door before Phil can muster a response. She chuckles all the way back to her desk.

The whole office is brighter for her presence.


	28. Chapter 28

They receive their reassignment to the Triskellion. Rose quirks an eyebrow at the embossed paper that appears on her desk, and raises her other brow at the matching one on Phil's desk.

"I haven't done anything," she says as she drops into the chair across from Phil. "Yet," she adds. Phil's eyebrow quirks higher. He drops his eyes to the missive.

"Well, we had best get going."

Rose is given a desk in the 'communal' area. Phil has his own office, off to one side and within throwing distance of Rose's new desk. Her neighbours are lovely young agents all, eager and wet behind the ears: Agents Miller, Les and Kirk. Agent Kirk sweeps her up and shows her the important things – the ladies' toilets and the coffee machine.

They return bearing caffeinated substances, one of which is destined for Phil's desk. Rose pushes open the door to Phil's office and stops. Takes in the shelves littered with memorabilia, knick knacks and antiques.

"Whoa, we got ourselves a fanboy in here!" she crows, and Phil almost looks embarrassed. She deposits his mug into his hands and admires a couple of miniature figurines of a man in a rather dramatic red-and-blue-and-white costume.

Phil clears his throat. Rose turns on him.

"So this is your actual office?" she asks. He nods. She wriggles around the desk and past him to admire an antique pocket watch. She squints at the small collection of model Corvettes on the shelf above. He sips his coffee and rests his hip against the desk. "It's very you," she finally says. Gives him a smile that leaves him breathless and slips back out.

He doesn't fail to notice the trail of disappearing gold dust following her.


	29. Chapter 29

When Agent Barton reports to Phil for duty, he has to walk past the woman with the sharp golden eyes and the bow-devouring glitter. He gives her a glare – that _was_ his favourite bow. She snarls in reply, mist falling from her lips, and he skitters past her and into the relative safety of Phil's office.

Phil gives him a terse smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Your first assignment under my purview is a relatively simple one," he begins.

Three hours later the door to Phil's office spits Agent Barton into the waiting arms of Rose Tyler. She smiles, full of teeth.

"You're with me, newbie," she purrs.


	30. Chapter 30

The 'relatively simple' assignment is a charity ball. The target is Doctor Vickers Samuel. Not for elimination, no, that would be too simple. It's planting a bug on the sucker for his "top secret meeting" later that night.

Which Agent Barton _had_ thought would be a problem. Dressed in a dark suit and dark glasses, playing the part of the 'body guard', and admiring the figure in a burgundy ballgown before him, Barton does not think this will be an issue _at all_.

He is also the chauffeur, but as this involves driving a Jaguar E-type Series 2 Roadster, he really does not mind. Agent Rose Tyler is quiet beside him, eyes fixed to the scenery as they pull up at the grandiose estate. Marble pillars support an utterly pretentious balcony over the entryway, finely dressed guests gliding in and out, fluttering their fingers and calling greetings down to the new arrivals.

Barton snorts. Rose snaps him a look, but quirks a corner of her lips.

"You're not the one wearing the corset, here," she says. He pauses for a moment. Clamps his lips.

"Darling, you should see me in a tiara," he blurts. Can't help himself. There's a moment of tense silence.

"Oh honey, I have just the one for you, and it comes with a matching LBD," she replies with a grin. Something deep in his stomach begins to unravel.

"Heels as well?" he prompts. She laughs.

"Of course, what kind of woman do you take me for?"

"Clearly one with a large and varied wardrobe and impeccable style."

"Flattery will get you a long way, Agent Barton," she says. There's a pause, and she is serious once more. "Pull anything on Coulson again and I will shoot you." Her words are a promise, one he knows she will keep.

"If I pull anything on Agent Coulson again, I'll let you shoot me," he replies with all the honesty he has in him. She assesses him. Amber gaze flays his skin, sinks viscous tendrils through the parietal bone to inspect his amygdala. He is bared for her to judge.

Her eyes flick away. He not-quite-but-very-nearly heaves a sigh of relief. "Let's get this show on the road," she says.


	31. Chapter 31

It is, Clint thinks, quite incredible to watch Agent Tyler work. She is bright and eloquent, holding herself with the grace of royalty, or at least what he imagines royal grace would be like, never having actually met royalty before. She flows across the room despite her phenomenal heels (something he is secretly envious of) to infix herself within a new cluster of finely decorated men and women.

He watches as, piece by piece, she bewitches the room with her smile and laugh. He sees no hint of the 'more' she has, that unknown glittering quantity. It's clearly miles beyond his security clearance.

He's almost disappointed when she manages to plant _several_ listening devices on their target. One on the inside of his jacket cuff. Another, she tucked under his lapel. Somehow she managed to place _two_ on his belt without any scandal.

He is crestfallen when the party finishes and he hasn't un-holstered any of his (numerous) guns.

It is, Clint thinks as the classic Jaguar flips boot over bonnet to skim across concrete on its roof, preferable to have a quiet night and be crestfallen than dangling upside down from one's seatbelt.


	32. Chapter 32

The first thing Clint notices is the absence of sound. The second thing he notices is he's upside down, head twisted against the roof of the car so he can only see out the driver's side window. The third thing he notices is several pairs of boots stepping towards the upturned car. Although he takes a moment to contemplate the possibility that there may be double ups, or triple ups, on those boots.

He knows his right shoulder is dislocated before he moves to test it. He's had it happen so many times before, it's almost become routine. Get blown up in a Jag, dislocate shoulder. Every-other-day kind of shit.

It is the work of a few seconds to cut through his seatbelt and land heavily on his shoulder. He counts his lucky stars – and the ones that swim through his vision at the jolt – that he lands on his left shoulder and not his right. A quick tuck and a very bendy pelvic movement later and he's on the ground, the roof of the car, wriggling his way to freedom.

A hand grabs him by the back of his shirt and pulls him clear moments before the percussive blast rattles his bones. He flails his arm out, fist connecting with some unknown part of a body. He flinches when something touches his ear, freezes when he's wrapped in someone's arms, their body pressing against his back, cocooning him.

Protecting him from the fire licking at his skin. Smothering him in gold dust, breathing a balm on his cheek. He relaxes against her and feels _safe_.

Her hand slips down his pants, unclasping his Beretta Bobcat. She aims it through the smoke. Pulls the trigger. Again. And again. And again.

When the ambulance pulls up there are four bodies sprawled next to a burnt out Jaguar. All shot between the eyes.


	33. Chapter 33

There are two hands on him. One cradles the back of his head. The other rests on his good arm. He can't hear anything, but he knows those hands are Agent Tyler's. He takes a strange comfort from them, as well as the discordant murmur deep within his bones. The backs of his eyelids are flecked with gold.

More hands grasp him and he's lifted, but those golden ones, the soothing ones, they never leave his skin. He loses consciousness as he is rattled along.

He blinks an eye open an indeterminate length of time later. Agent Coulson leans against the doorway, arms crossed. Fingers are loosely wrapped around his left wrist. His right is strapped up.

"You should have mentioned it to us," Agent Coulson says quietly, pouring into the room on silent feet. Clint huffs. Winces. They haven't quite given him enough painkillers to hide the fact that his ribs are probably fractured.

"I'm surprised you didn't know already," Clint responds.

"It was an unacceptable risk to go into the field without full disclosure of _incredibly relevant_ medical conditions," Agent Coulson replies in his mild but malevolent way. The hand stirs. A head lifts with it tucked away beside Clint's pillow. Gold-spun hair tumbles over Agent Tyler's face and her eyes blink open. He's relieved to see them molten brown.

"I'm glad to see you awake, Clint," she says and her smile is so genuine it gives him an odd feeling deep in his chest. "So is Phil," she adds, flashing a sideways look at the suited man. Agent Coulson gives her a long suffering look.

"You gave us quite a scare, Barton," he says.

"Sorry, sir." Clint wants to squirm under two sets of worried eyes and the warmth spreading through his core. "It won't happen again."

"Make sure that it doesn't."


	34. Chapter 34

Of course, while nothing quite the same happens again – he is now outfitted with a beautiful slimline set of hearing aids with a plug in field set – many other injuries follow. It's part of being an active agent.

Clint is regularly told to sit the fuck down at 'his' desk (he's not so sure it _is_ his desk, he keeps finding sweet wrappers he's quite sure he didn't eat stowed around it) and push paper while this injury or that repairs. Nothing is enough to keep him out of the fray for much longer than two weeks, but those two weeks are always hell.

Until he discovers the ventilation shafts.

He is never found at his desk again.


	35. Chapter 35

Clint is bored. Clint normally is a bit of a showoff. Bored Clint is a consummate show off. Not to mention the leg wound he's been benched for is now well and truly healed and his leg is _fine_ damnit, he should be back out in the field.

When the improvised sound system starts playing, he is ready. He saunters up to Agent Tyler's desk, conveniently located immediately outside Agent Coulson's office. He jumps onto the desk, light and spry, but lands with a heavy thump as the salsa music begins. Agent Tyler leans back in her chair and raises an eyebrow at him. Clint offers her his hand.

Her eyes flash gold for a moment and her lips quirk into an impish grin. Her hand slips into his and she ascends with such lightness she barely makes a sound.

She does kick her paperwork to the floor to give them more room.

They begin slow, gauging each carefully placed step, each precisely calculated twist and turn. Clint leads but she, oh she _guides_ his lead, suggests the next step, and he never denies her. How could he, with her hair loose and her eyes glittering with delight?

Within the tight confines of Rose Tyler's desk, their legs fly to the Salsa. Feet slide across the vinyl desktop. Hips twist, spines angle, heads dip. Clint's world narrows to the music and the gold-haired woman in his arms, how they slide by one another, their feet moving faster with each pass.

He is surprised when the music ends and the applause begins. Rose steps back and takes a bow, elbowing him in the ribs to do the same, and the magic of the dance is broken. He bows with an extra flourish to Agent Coulson who stands at his door, arms crossed and face set in his 'I'm trying to remain blank but I'm secretly quite amused' look.

"Report to R'n'D for an update on your equipment then go," Agent Coulson says. Clint whoops and leaps down from the desk, pausing to offer his hand to Rose. She takes it and drops down beside him.

"Try not to get hurt this op," she says.

"No promises," he replies. He runs out as she picks up her paperwork.


	36. Chapter 36

Amazingly, Clint returns later that week unscathed. He spends some of his time at his desk, some down at R&D, and the rest in the vents. Particularly when Rose gets That Look on her face that means she's going to chase him up for his report.

 _Hindsight_ , Clint thinks, _is 20-20_. Agent Maria Hill raises a single eyebrow. Clint gives her a sheepish grin before hurling himself from her desk and out the door with a scream of terror. He bolts past Agent Coulson's office, past Rose's desk. She cackles as he runs, gold trickling past her lips.

He hides in a vent in the darkest, most unused portion of the complex, hammering out his report on an archaic laptop.

It's not until the next day that he realises the vent system through Agent Hill's office doesn't have a man-hole, or even grating, over her desk. Rose giggles when she catches him glaring.


	37. Chapter 37

They are despatched to Ukraine. There is a 'situation brewing' on the Mokra Sura river, south west of Dnepropetrovsk. They are dropped off in Cairo to disappear under cover and make their own way to Ukraine.

Rose grabs Phil's hand and tugs him toward a row of yellow taxis. "Come on, hon!" she says. They'd gone through numerous scenarios. They ended up settling on the 'golden oldie' of newlyweds. Rose wears Egypt Appropriate Attire of a flowing, knee-length skirt, modest boho blouse, and comfortable loafers. Her hair is a riot of curls.

Phil trails after her. She laughs and her eyes crinkle. "I've been here a few times before, Sawesit has this lovely little bed and breakfast somewhere around here. He won't know me, timelines and all, but if Sawesit exists, he will have his beautiful little place."

They pile into the car, their luggage ensconced in the trunk. Rose smiles brightly at the driver and strikes up a conversation with him. In fluent Arabic. Because of course she speaks Arabic.

The driver is understandably surprised, but before long they are trading smiles and deep belly laughs and Phil wonders how he ever thought he could contain all that is Rose Tyler on a sheaf of paper tucked between two pieces of cardboard.


	38. Chapter 38

Clint house sits. Well, Clint isn't supposed to house sit but he bullies Agent Kirk until she relinquishes Rose's keys. It's either that or break in. And when he says house sits, he actually means pops by every day to water her plants and wonder at the vacant walls and bland furnishings.

It's not what he imagines Rose Tyler's apartment would be like. It is a tiny one bedroom in one of the 'SHIELD approved' and subsidised apartment blocks near the Triskelion. Clint has a studio in one of the neighbouring blocks – it's all he needs – but his apartment is filled with colour and knick knacks.

Rose's apartment is bare. White walls. Wood floor. No rugs. Grey sofa, small TV. No tablet or computer. Small table crammed into the corner of the kitchen / dining room / living area that seems to be used as both a place for eating and for working.

He brings over one of his spare rugs. It is a riot of colour he latch-hooked himself. It goes at the foot of the couch. Clint spends the next week furiously working, and a matching granny square blanket is thrown over the end of the couch.

He visits a thrift shop and comes away with two very cleverly altered paintings – one that has a Storm Trooper rowing a boat on a still lake, another that has all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hiding in plain sight on a city street filled with people.

He hangs them where she will see them when she opens her door.


	39. Chapter 39

Phil knows the op is a bust when an IED goes off next to their tour bus. There is no gold dust as Rose flies from her seat and his head cracks against the window.

He wakes an indeterminable time later. His head is a drumbeat of agony. He is strapped to a metal table in dorsal recumbency. His ears tell him his is the only breath to stir the dank air of the room. He peeks an eye open.

Grey walls, grey floors, and a blackened grate in one corner. One door. No windows.

Phil tests the restraints. Rope. Firmly tied, but _rope_. He's wearing SHIELD issued cufflinks and the idiots didn't remove them. He wriggles his hand some more until he can activate the one on his right wrist. The cufflink edging snaps out, sharp and serrated. It is the work of a moment to cut through the bindings. The rope slips to the ground.

He cuts the rope around his feet as close to the end as he can. Loops the ends around both fists. Presses his ear to the door.

Flimsy door. He can hear his guard breathing through it. Sits in wait to see if anything changes.

He moves quickly when another door slams open and the guard gives a surprised yelp. Phil wraps the rope tightly about the guard's throat and jerks him backwards, into the room. With a quick twist the guard ends up on his knees, the ligature tightening, crushing his trachea. The guard struggles ineffectually. Slumps. Phil releases him and the guard slips to the ground.


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The guns here are actually AK-74s and not misspelled -47s.

Rose moves to cover the door, her left hand with a Makarov pointing down the hallway.

"Agent, status report," Phil snaps. Agent Tyler straightens her back but does not turn, favouring watching the hall to eye-contact.

"Operational," she bites out. Phil pointedly looks at her right hand, a messy pulp of blood and bone. "Operational, _sir_ ," she growls into the silence.

"We _will_ discuss this," Phil replies. He takes the body's AK-74 and Makarov. Thumbs the safety on the Makarov and shoves it into his belt. Slings the AK-74 around to his front.

Phil takes point. Listens to Rose's breathing: harsh and wet with a worrying underlying crackle. Listens to Rose's steps: tentative, favouring both sides though moreso the right.

There are two guards around the corner, talking quietly in Russian, AK-74s in hand and their backs a glorious target. Rose touches Phil's arm, slowly stows away her Makarov, and points at the one on the right. Phil nods and shifts his AK-74 to his back. They inch forwards.

The guards don't notice until they are dead. Rose grabs the guard across the mouth and jaw and snaps his neck with a deft twist. Phil does something similar, only with two hands instead of one. He drags them both around the corner and relieves them of their Makarovs.

"Out that way," Rose breathes, lips pressed close to Phil's ear. "One room, roughly ten by fifteen, eight guards. Two at our door, two at external door, four at desks – two left, two right, all facing the external door." Phil moves the AK-74 to his arms. Slips another Makarov into Rose's belt. He catches her grin from the corner of his eye as she pulls back, all teeth and fierce.

They position themselves against the door. Nod. Rose pulls it open with her mangled hand.


	41. Chapter 41

They're evacuated direct to the Triskelion. Clint meets them in medical.

"Sir," Clint pokes his head around Phil's door. "I think you're going to want to come." He helps Phil to his feet and they walk, Phil's arm over his shoulders, his arm around Phil's waist, down the hallway towards the ruckus.

The nurses and Doctor Walter are backing out the door as Clint props Phil up against the frame.

"I do hope you're not refusing medical treatment," Phil says in his mildest voice. Rose's eyes snap to his. She has a large needle in her left hand, brandished towards the medical professionals. She hides the needle behind her back. She almost looks sheepish. _Almost_.

Clint casually rests his hand on the other side of the doorframe, blocking it. Rose puts the needle down. Wraps her left arm across her body.

"I'm going to shut the door," Clint says easily. He moves Phil into the room and does so. Deposits Phil on the visitor's chair and eases Rose back onto the gurney. Her shoulders drop from around her ears. "What do you need?"

"Local anaesthetic," she sighs.

"Lidocaine do?" She nods. Clint grabs the bottle and a handful of 18 gauge needles and syringes.

They work like this. Clint asking what to do next and Rose instructing. In no time at all they have three nerve blocks in place – infraclavicular, axillary and wrist. A brief glance at the x-rays, still conveniently up, and Clint is pulling bone away from bone and sliding it all back into place.

Phil supervises from his chair.


	42. Chapter 42

Phil stares Doctor Walter down in silence until Rose is released on medical leave.

Clint bound her ribs (six ribs with hairline fractures creeping up from the costochondral junctions, no damage to the sternum but that's a miracle in and of itself), cleaned and bandaged up the scrapes and scratches around her head and shoulders from the bus crash, and bound and slung her hand.

Clint deposits Phil back into his own room in the medical ward and takes Rose home.

Clint opens the door. Rose chokes and shoves her left fist into her mouth. Clint grins. When she finally suppresses her laughter, she raises an eyebrow at Clint. "Is that really Michaelangelo hiding behind a Starbucks sign?" she asks. Clint cackles and nods and pulls her further into her apartment.

He settles her on the sofa, propped up on pillows and wrapped in the granny square blanket. Puts the TV on and finds Antiques Road Show. Disappears out the front door.

Reappears a few minutes later with deliciously greasy fish and chips. Rose looks at him as though she might cry from joy. He stretches out on the couch next to her, his arm slung carefully over her shoulder. Salt flicks from their fingers all over the granny square blanket.


	43. Chapter 43

Phil is released from the ward the next day. Clint personally delivers him to his front door, ignoring all assertions that he's fine, honest.

Clint comes by the next day with a thick and hearty goat stew and sourdough bread. They crash on Phil's sofa and bicker over what to watch. Clint puts up a good fight but ultimately lets Phil win the remote. He flicks the channel to Antiques Road Show. Clint wonders how he managed to get landed with two fuddy duddies.

Phil melts into the sofa at the first taste of stew.

"Secret recipe passed down from mother to daughter for generations," Clint supplies.

"I thought you just sprang from the gaping earth fully formed," Phil replies.

"No, sir, I sprang from a tree. And I'll have you know it was the bearded lady who taught me this recipe," Clint sniffs and looks down his nose at Phil. Phil's eyes crinkle in the corners and one muscle at the edge of his lip twitches.

Clint counts that as a win and settles into the cushions.


	44. Chapter 44

Phil returns to office duty the next day. He's still on conditional medical leave – no active duty for him for a few more weeks. While he sustained no fractures to his skull, he had been severely concussed. Not to mention covered in lacerations from shrapnel and glass, some of which had to be extracted from his shoulders and back.

Certainly not enough to keep him away from his _administrative duties_.

His sparkly pink mug sits atop his desk, as empty as Rose's desk. The fifth time Phil glances up at the empty chair, Clint is there, tacking away at the computer. The archer glances up and snaps him a quick grin before returning to his tapping. Slow, each key pressed with great consideration by an index finger.

Phil's eyes lose their pinched look the longer Clint sits at the desk.


	45. Chapter 45

Clint is really a lot more perceptive than most people give him credit for. He realises there's something 'off' about Rose before he realises it's 'problem off' and is already taking steps to mitigate the 'offness' before it goes completely tits up.

Rose is in parts distant and overly tactile. Some evenings Clint will turn up in her apartment (the lock on her door was a peace of cake, and Rose didn't seem to mind at all) and she will carefully angle her body away from all contact. It may continue all evening, that careful inch of personal space around her, or she may relax and curl herself up against Clint's side.

Other evenings she loops her arm around Clint's shoulders the moment he steps through the door and drags him to the couch, where she throws her legs over his and sticks to his side like glue while they eat whatever takeouts he's brought and watch something mindless on TV.

So he pretty much moves in. Shoves some clothes into a rucksack that he tucks in one corner of her lounge and sleeps on her couch. The first morning Rose walks out of her bedroom to a lightly snoring Clint she greets him with a beautific smile and a big mug of _pure heaven_ (also known as coffee made by Rose Tyler). The next morning she makes them waffles.

Clint really is a lot more perceptive than most people give him credit for, and he is deeply grateful for that perception. On the third night the screaming starts.


	46. Chapter 46

It is a horrible noise, Clint thinks, even as he hurls himself off the sofa and down the hall. It is a horrible noise because, even unconscious, she is trying to be _silent_. It is only because he has left his hearing aids in, and increased their sensitivity, that Clint hears anything at all.

She is sitting upright and gasping and clutching her wrist to her chest. She stares through him for long moments. He doesn't move from the doorway until her eyes focus on reality. On his face. He takes a step in. Her face takes on a peculiar colour and she climbs ungainly from her bed, throwing herself past him and into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

Clint sighs and runs his hand over his face to the sound of Rose Tyler throwing up in the toilet. He pads across the hallway. Leans his forehead against the door.

"I'll put the kettle on," he mumbles into the wood. He hears what might be 'thank you' around retching.

He has her cup of rooibos – one heaped teaspoon of Australian Bush Honey and a spot of full fat milk – ready to hand to her when she stumbles out of the bathroom. She accepts the mug as it is pressed into her left hand, but puts it on the counter in favour of stepping into Clint and dropping her forehead to his shoulder.

He wraps her up in his arms. Rests his chin on the top of her head. Holds her while she dusts off the jagged corners of her psyche and begins to fit herself back together. "If you ever want to talk, I will listen," he presses into her riotous curls.


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we're up to date!

They end up falling asleep on the bed together. Rose wakes up with her left arm flung over Clint's face, and Clint's arm over her waist. Clint is face down in the bed, a leg thrown over one of hers. He grizzles when she moves.

"Let me up or I'll pee on you," Rose says. There's a pause while Clint processes. He retracts his appendages. Quickly. Rose snorts and gets out of the bed.

The plunger is full of sweet sweet coffee when Clint finally stumbles down the hallway from his own visit to the bathroom. He grunts as Rose deposits a mug the size of his head in front of him and pours the coffee in. Tops it off with a splash of milk. She leans her hip against the counter and takes a sip of her own loose leaf chocolate and Assam blend.

The quiet is pregnant. Rose watches him. She waits until Clint has downed at least half of the coffee in the mug before she speaks.

"I was experimented on," she says. "For decades." She doesn't look at him. "I've been on the run for so long, but each time I'm hurt it's like I'm back there again."

Clint bumps their shoulders together.

"We've all got things that keep us up at night. There's no shame in it."

"I know. Thanks, Clint," she says. They lean against one another and the counter and sip their caffeinated drinks.

"Wanna go shoot something?"

" _God_ yes."


	48. Chapter 48

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exam stress induced writing. IN DENIAL! TOTAL DENIAL!

Rose Tyler returns to her desk the next week. She keeps her right hand in a soft cotton glove. Phil stares over his imaginary spectacles at her from his desk. She flashes him a grin. Sashays into his office and deposits his pink sparkly mug full of blissful coffee.

“I am perfectly well enough to be back on administrative duties,” she says.

And, for all intents and purposes, she appears to be so. Phil watches her closely throughout the day. She operates faster with one hand than most of the actual administrative assistants do with both.

When the business day begins to tick into business night, Phil finds himself accosted by two agents.

They pile into the back of a taxi. Phil is squeezed between Rose on his right and Clint on his left.

He is still perplexed as to what exactly they have in store for him when they pull up at his apartment and he is hustled inside. Clint takes his jacket and folds it (properly) over the back of a chair. Rose leads Phil to the couch and sits him down. Sits herself with her back to the arm-rest and shoves her feet under his thigh. Clint leans over with a bottle of beer for each of them before taking the other side of the couch and slinging his legs over Phil's.

“You got the remote?” Clint asks. Rose digs down the side of the couch to unearth it.

“You got food?” she asks.

“On its way,” he replies. Phil sits between them and blinks.

“Antiques Roadshow time,” Rose grins and navigates to where Phil has stored entirely _series_ of the show.

The beers are drunk and thai food is devoured and Phil spends the evening with two replete agents sprawled across his lap watching Antiques Road Show. He thinks life is pretty good, thank you very much.

 


	49. Chapter 49

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another chapter that did not want to be writ. But it was.

Clint and Phil ship out later that week. Phil is grounded on the comms - he's still not cleared for active field duty. Agent Perkins and Shaw complete the team.

The intel is solid. The order comes direct from Director Fury's desk.

Agent Perkins is decapitated. Agent Shaw jumps back and twists in time to only lose his left arm. Agent Barton on high is sprung and takes a bullet to the thigh. He still manages to pincushion every bogey on the field.

Agent Barton can do nothing as he watches Agent Shaw bleed out on dirt. He dies before the medvac team lands.

Phil's extraction from a local hotel is slower than he would like. He arrives at the Triskellion the next day, just as Clint is released from the tender clutches of the ward.

They go to Director Fury's office to debrief together.

 


	50. Chapter 50

Rose is there waiting when they are released from Fury's office. She wraps them both up in a hug, one arm around each. “I've got a driver,” she says. She keeps an arm slung around Clint's waist and he pretends not to lean on her as they leave.

They end up at Rose's place. “She's got the longer couch,” Clint explains. She does. Clint is deposited on the sofa while Phil and Rose sift through the dazzling array of takeaway menus. They finally settle on Indian.

Rose cards her fingers through Clint's hair as Phil makes their order.

“Would you like me to kiss it better?” she asks. Clint tilts his head back and levels the most woeful look at her.

“Yes,” he whimpers, jutting his lower lip out and wiggling it. She rolls her eyes. Plants a kiss on his brow. Moves around to his side and carefully, oh so gently, brushes her lips against his thigh. Leans in to embrace him.

Phil smiles as he hangs up. Takes the seat on the far end of the couch by Clint's feet. Rose slowly raises Clint's feet to slide in beneath them, snugged up next to Phil.

“Shouldn't be too far. Antique's Road Show?” Phil asks. Rose gives him a wide grin, tongue peeking out between her teeth even as Clint groans in mock horror. “I'll take that as a yes, then.”

 


	51. Chapter 51

Rose is on her feet before she is conscious. A sense of unease, so close to fear, trickles down her spine. She sees flashes, feels hair brush past her fingertips, inhales a sweet perfume.

There is no one here. It is only Rose, and her mind, and gold dust trickling from her palms, her wrists, her eyes.

In the corner of her mind she sees red and green and _so much blood_.  Lifeblood.  

She shakes herself as a dog would throw off water and puts on some slippers. Shoves clothes into a bag. Leaves her apartment and walks the two blocks to Clint's. Streetlights dance off golden irises. Elongate shadows beneath her feet. She lets herself in. Grabs two of his granny square throws and curls up on his sofa.

To the sound of Clint's almost-but-not-quite snoring, Rose falls asleep.

 


	52. Chapter 52

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cackled as I wrote this chapter.

Rose is on edge. It's not unusual for Clint to do a solo mission. In fact it's actually quite a regular occurrence. Even a two-to-five-month jaunt isn't unheard of.

Rose is twitchy. A cold fist has clamped about her lumbar vertebrae and refuses to release. She mentions it to Phil. His frown deepens. He mentions it to Fury. _His_ frown doesn't change.

“Noted,” comes the reply.

Rose takes to filling her spare time with hand-to-hand training. She meets Melinda in the S.H.I.E.L.D. onsite gym. Everyone universally agrees this is a Very Bad Thing.

People take to very _very_ carefully checking the M &M packets from the various on-site vending machines for Skittles.

 


	53. Chapter 53

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to put these next few chapters up while here as well as on ff.net. Fixing!

It is noted by all and sundry that the only thing more terrifying than Rose Tyler and Melinda May conniving together is them sparring together. It comes to pass that, whenever someone in the gym notices Rose and Melinda getting ready, the agents are notified.

It goes from just a few people watching them to half the active agents onsite in a matter of days.

The first few sparring matches are tests – both keep their strength in check, lashing out with experimental punches. Their grins spread as they match each other step for step, beat for beat. Melinda does something fancy with her balance that results in a sudden lateral collapse and a sweeping foot. Rose's lips spread wider as she hurls herself _onto_ Melinda, jumping over the foot as a by product. Spins them so Melinda is atop with a foot lodged against her lumbar vertebrae and hands gripping her shoulders tight. Pushes up and out with her foot, and Melinda lands on her hands and knees on the mat only to launch herself forward even as Rose flips to her feet.

"You're good," Melinda comments as they stretch down. Rose flashes a cheeky grin.

"You're not half bad yourself, though admittedly I have a _few_ years on you." Melinda's eyebrow quirks at the young woman. Rose cackles and leans forward to grip her ankles.


	54. Chapter 54

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!
> 
> Go read the not-quite-canon bonus chapters as written by SONGUE in his fic Smoke on the Water - The Untold Stories! over on ff.net!

After a number of complaints from staff regarding toothpaste in their bags suddenly turning into banana-flavoured lube, or roll-on deoderant bottles rolling out toothpaste (and, by logical continuation of this, though no one will dare admit it, lube that smells _seriously fabulous_ but that you know is _not lube_ as soon as you squirt it out), Rose and Melinda are sent out on milk runs. Separately. On completely different continents.

They high-five each other on their way out.


	55. Chapter 55

Melinda May ends up in Europe.

Rose Tyler ends up in 'Straya, strolling along Circular Quay towards the Opera House. Her quarry stops at Searock Grill. She continues to the Chocolate Cafe next door, orders herself the fruit platter and a dark chocolate, and settles herself into a window seat, out of the blistering cold of Sydney in a harsh winter.

Her seat gives her a blissful view of the harbour, as well as being ideal to spot her quarry making a move towards the Opera House. She's due to meet him on the steps of the Opera House to receive a USB stick with data on an international terrorist organisation thought to have their hands on an 0-8-4. Although, by the Australian Constitution, it technically _isn't_ an 'international' terrorist organisation. Rose was deeply amused to find out that New Zealand is specifically named as a state of Australia in the Australian constitution.

She's been surveilling him for the last two weeks, and he must be the most dull terrorist she's ever met, because he does _nothing_ interesting. He's in bed by 9.30pm each night and he doesn't wake up until 6.30am the next day. He has the same thing for breakfast (bircher muesli) from the same cafe (this delightful new popup on Kent Street). He holds a boring job as a paper pusher in a relatively large insurance firm. He goes to the same place for lunch and orders the same thing and eats it by himself. He goes home on time, makes himself something for dinner, and sits down to watch banal real life shows. Including Friday and Saturday nights.

There is absolutely no indication that this nearly thirty year old white male is anything other than a well paid white collar worker.

Other than his end-to-end encryption on all fibre traffic. And the conspicuous absence of friends. And the fact that his identity, with its beautifully crafted legitimate looking life-long history, only began life five years ago.

Rose sips the hot chocolate and nearly moans in bliss. She is _thoroughly_ enjoying this mission. It's easy. It's in a beautiful city with fantastic food and chocolate cafes dotted _everywhere_. The ocean and its siren call is always nearby.

She tucks into her fruit platter with gusto. It is all too soon gone, and she licks the last of the chocolate from her fingers.

Which turns out to be excellent timing, as her quarry is moving once more, meandering his way past the store front towards the Opera House. She watches him out of the corner of her eye as she finishes her hot chocolate.


	56. Chapter 56

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of backstory for those who are interested. So I lived, worked, and studied, in Sydney for 3 years. Not six months after I left the city, the Lindt siege happened. A disturbed individual took the Lindt cafe in CBD Sydney hostage for 16 hours. During that siege, one of the waiters and a barrister, Katrina Dawson, was killed. She was a hard working and very skilled woman who I had the pleasure of working along side. She was integral to my old team and quite a number of long-running cases we had going. Not only was she a very skilled barrister, but she was a truly lovely individual. She is missed.

Rose exits the chocolate cafe with a sigh, pulling her gloves back on to keep her fingers warm. She shrugs back into her scarf and coat. It's not quite the same cold of London, but it is similar enough to have her smiling. She tootles down the way. Her quarry is ahead of her still. Dawdling. She ducks into the UGG shop to admire the sheep fleece gloves and boots and hats. She earmarks a pair of slippers for Phil.

From the store she has a clear line of site to the Opera House itself, and from this vantage point she keeps him in her sights as he climbs the steps and wanders around, admiring the view.

Rose brushes her hair back and surreptitiously switches on her earwig.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. Australia, this is Agent Kevin on the airwaves," comes the deep twang. "Sit rep please, Agent Tyler."

"Pleasure to have you in my ear, Kev," Rose purrs as she strokes a luxurious 100% wool jacket. The agent laughs. "Target is in position. Request confirmation handover is go."

"Confirm handover is go. Confirm backup, two junior agents in locations three hundred metres south at Number Two Warf, two hundred metres south at Oz Jet Boating. They're mostly there to watch how the pros do, no pressure," Agent Kevin says. Rose smiles.

"Happy to have nublets observe," she replies. Agent Kevin laughs again.

"I'll remember that one. Keep your earwig on and let me know when you're clear. You're to admire the view while you're at the Opera House – it only gets prettier at night or during the Vivid Sydney festival – then head to the Museum of Sydney for rendezvous with Special Agent Khur at ticket sales."

"Got it, moving in now," Rose says and exits the shop. Meanders the brief hundred or so metres to the steps of the Opera House. Smiles and breathes in deep of the fresh ocean spray. She casually strolls up to her target.

"Hi, Daniel Jones?" she says, holding out her hand to shake. "I'm Janine, it's a pleasure to meet you." Daniel takes her hand in a firm grip and shakes it, his eyebrows painfully neutral but beads of sweat beginning to push through on his brow.

"Just don't trace it back to me," he says, and Rose pulls back her hand with the USB key in her palm. She quickly slides it up her sleeve and back down into her glove.

"Thank you for your cooperation," she says.

Rose twitches to the side and the concrete behind her explodes rather than her skull. Swears under her breath. Daniel is already running. No bullets come for him.

"Under fire. Roof of apartments above Ugg," Rose growls into her earwig as she twists her body to avoid another bullet.

"Copy that, junior agents inbound, I'll have eyes on you in five," Agent Kevin replies smoothly.

"No time," Rose says. She makes for the sea wall in a zig zag. There are no crowds to protect. The few people who are around have already begun to flee, the Lindt Siege still fresh in everyone's minds. She vaults the railing and rolls into her landing on the level below. She weaves her way around tables and chairs. Leaps to the top of the wall and kicks off into a graceful arch into the ocean.

The bullet enters her mid-back at an oblique angle. The momentum throws off her dive.

She hits the water below. The earwig falls out screaming "Agent down! I repeat Agent down! Agent is in the water!"


	57. Chapter 57

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written with a head full of cold boogers.

She is floating. It is an abstract thought. Her body is intangible, her mind barely formed. Salt water caresses her temples, oozes past her cochlear to nudge her hippocampus.

The current washes through her and she is connected intrinsically to living, breathing, moving, loving, giving, vicious ocean. Kilometres away, a great beast detects her and changes its meandering course. Further, deeper, the life, death, of thousands of infinitely precious and impossible creatures touch her.

Her tears would be swallowed by vastness had she any to shed.

She is being pulled. Something else is near her. Touching her. Lifting her. Fabric is pulled away from her body. Coverings. Clothing. Unnecessary here in the deep. Her arms are exposed and the sensation of _life_ doubles, triples, overwhelms and consumes. Her heart swells fit to burst.

But her body is being dragged upwards. Her mind is too far from it to make it move. It breaks the surface. Concrete scrapes the skin from its limbs. Its back kisses the concrete and two fists slam into its sternum.


	58. Chapter 58

They are inside her again. The _surgeons_ with their indelicate fingers shuffling beneath the greater omentum, feeling around her jejunum.

The general anaesthetic is wearing thin. Sensory neurons are firing. Motor efferent pathways remain quiet. For now. She knows it will not be long.

The idiots haven't yet learned to physically restrain her. Chemical restraints only work for so long.

Blunt tipped hands move upwards towards her kidney. There's a noise above her head, a voice that grates across her cochlear. A pause in the fumbling. One hand removes itself. Two hands join in. Perhaps they will take her kidney now, too.

There is a tug. Another. They're suturing something. What new torture have they thought of? A final tug and the hands leave her intestines be.

She moves. Hands snap up to wrap around the jaw of the first surgeon. He collapses. She has not managed to dislocate his cervical vertebrae. The angle is wrong.

She punches the other surgeon in the face. Kicks him back as he howls and clutches his broken nose. There is a third in the room with a gun out and trained on her. Her eyes narrow. The third one is young and trained but oh so green. Wet hair and sodden clothes.

Her hands are steady.

"Agent Tyler!" the third shrieks. "Agent Tyler _stand down!_ "

Time ...

stops.

Seconds tick by in her brain. The only Australian in Torchwood is, was, will be Jo Jones.

This woman standing before her, aiming down the barrel of a Glock 22, is not Jo Jones. She wonders, as her life crashes back through her head, if there is a Jo Jones in this dimension. If that wonderful woman who sacrificed everything exists.

The world begins to move again and Agent Rose Tyler lies back down on the stretcher.


	59. Chapter 59

She is operated on at St Vincent's Private Hospital. A S.H.I.E.L.D. surgeon by the name of Doctor Ropata is dispatched to tend to her and arrives in a fluster.

"I have been told general anaesthetics are not to be used, and you process any local anaesthetic that is not a direct nerve block too quickly to be of any use. Is this correct?" he asks, frowning over Rose's split abdomen.

"Yes," she replies. Clenches the sides of the bed to stop herself from getting him _away_ by force. The surgeon notices. He takes a step back.

"I understand you also have exceptional healing," he says, stripping his gloves off and dumping them in the waste basket.

"Yes," she replies.

"I see your scars. If you weren't alive, I'd say you'd been autopsied," he says. Her eyes go dark.

"Yes," she replies.

"So," the surgeon begins. "How are you with not-so-sterile operations? Get infections much? Because I think if I tried to wheel you into surgery right now you'd succeed in doing what you tried to do to that EMT out there," he says.

"Do it," she replies.

"Let me just get the go-ahead from the Almighty himself – he's the one who'll be sorting out my practising certificate if this all goes tits up – and I'll have you stitched up in no time." Doctor Ropata claps his hands together and leaves her.


	60. Chapter 60

She is stabilised and flown back, first class. Phil meets her at the gate. Takes one look at her and wraps her up in a hug. She tucks her head under his chin.

"Fury wants to see you straight away," he explains. Rose nods. He carries her bags to the Totally Not SHIELD SUV. Walks her up to the door Fury's office. Stands to one side as she enters.

"No, _you_ listen to _me_ , Janus."

Anthea looks up from her desk and motions for Rose to sit and wait for Fury's conversation to be finished.

"I send you one of my _best agents_ for a _milkrun demo_. You _injured my agent_ because you made a bullshit call based on no intel! She was shot, but wait, there's _fucking more_! Because you don't _brief_ your _fucking agents_ two EMTs are injured and now I have hospital administration breathing down my neck because two of their nurses assisted in a non-sterile intra-abdominal operation!"

Anthea almost smiles as she taps away at her computer.

"I don't _give a fuck_ what you think because you clearly don't! Oh don't give me that shit, Janus, I've worked with you for too damn long to -" there's a pause. "You don't _fuck_ with _my agents_."

"He's off the phone now," Anthea says. "You can go in."

Rose does so, tentatively. Fury shoots her a glare. "I miss the old damn phones. It's not as satisfying hanging up on people when you can't slam the damn phone down," he growls.

Rose smiles. It is short lived.

"Sir, I'd like to be removed from active duty," she says. Fury sits down behind the desk and steeples his hands. Levels a look at her with his single eye.

"Do you really think you are the first, or will be the last, agent who has nearly murdered an EMT when injured on duty?" Fury asks.

"But sir -"

"I know what this is, Agent Tyler," he says.

"With all due respe -"

"You're be old enough to be my several times over great grandmother." The flat and dispassionate way he says this has Rose slamming her jaw shut. "You have a long history. We are an agency of spies, assassins, and general badass motherfuckers, and every single one of them has their own unique triggers. They've only been doing this for a couple of decades at most. You've been doing this shit for centuries – don't think I don't know that."

A muscle twitches in her jaw. Fury leans forward on his desk.

"Listen to be very carefully and very closely. I will only say this once. You are an exceptional agent. You are able to pull off ops that have gone so far sideways they're upside-fucking-down. But you have a history, and this makes you react to certain things. Your experiences dictate that. There is no shame in your reaction." He pauses here for a moment. "Now I'm going to ask you something and you're going to answer."

Rose's jaw _clenches_.

"What do you need?"

Her jaw relaxes and her shoulders slump. She breathes out a sigh.

"A few weeks off, please, sir," she says.

"Take as long as you want," he replies.

"And possibly a holiday to New Zealand," she says.

"Tell Anthea the dates and where, she will take it from there," he replies.

"A time machine?" she asks. He gives her a Look. She stands up. "Sir, I'm going to give you a hug now." His eye narrows.

"Please don't," he says. She walks around the desk. He doesn't move away, but his eye narrows further and his mouth downturns. He stands.

She dives in and wraps her arms around his chest, very briefly.

"Get out of my office, Agent Tyler," he snarls, but his eyes smile. She laughs and darts out of his office.


	61. Chapter 61

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we're back up to date :D

Phil drops her off at the airport. She hugs him goodbye. "Let me know when Clint checks in," she says. Phil nods.

She leaves.

There is a self contained motorhome sitting in the car park with her name on the keys. She high-tails it out of the city, taking the Southern down to Pokeno. She ends up at Miranda for the night.

She smiles up at the night sky from the hottest of the natural hot pools. She wears a covering, textured one piece that hides her scars. Most of them, anyway.

No one bothers her.


	62. Chapter 62

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This weekend's been a total write off for study!

Phil rattles around in his apartment the first night. Gives up and takes his things over to Rose's apartment the next morning.

 

His place is empty. Rose's place is a melting pot of all of them. Clint's eccentric collection of mismatched cushions and throws and rugs and paintings with hidden geek things. Rose's tastefully neutral couches and arm chair (purchased after much badgering from Clint) is barely visible beneath one of Clint's granny-square throws.

 

On top of one of the well filled book shelves sits a small, red, 1962 Chevrolet Corvette next to a matching 1963 Jaguar E-type.

 


	63. Chapter 63

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOO teeny tiny snippet!

She goes to Hot Water Beach. Parks up. Spends four days there, eating smoked tuna from the Coromandel Smokery and forcing herself to relax in the hot groundwater.

Her body doesn't know how. She's taken so little time to truly rest since …

She moves on. Goes a circuitous route to Rotorua down the east coast. Leaves the windows down so the salt air can snatch at her locks.

 


	64. Chapter 64

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can confirm chickens are trying to take over the world. Their evil little scientists have been hard at work formulating bacteria and viruses to kill us all, AND I HAVE BEEN TESTED UPON!
> 
> ...in short, I ate chicken and it tried to kill me. But it did not succeed! They have not yet perfected their weapons of biological destruction! Yet.

 

Rotorua smells and is incredibly touristy but they have the most immaculate natural springs you could ever imagine.

Rose books herself in for a deluxe package at the Polynesian Spa.

The massage therapist comments that her back is a mess of knots and overtaxed muscles. Rose agrees. The massage therapist comments that she would benefit from some extensive therapy.

She spends the rest of the day either wrapped in mud or lazing about in the private pools. Some of her muscles begin to unwind.

She doesn't remember the last time she felt this relaxed.


	65. Chapter 65

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm now on tumblr as dogtorbones, come find me!

She finds herself a spot in a field opposite a lonely beach on the west coast of the Coromandel. The day is bleak and grey. Driftwood juts out from the pebbling of the beach.

The wind howls and rips through her hair and claws at her eyes.

She screams back.

 


	66. Chapter 66

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm along for the ride almost as much as you guys are.
> 
> Also, tumblr, dogtorbones dot tumblr dot com. Not much up there yet but pop by anyway.
> 
> I am now officially in my last month of my twenties. I should do something totally insane. Instead I am disappearing into study for my up-coming exams. There may be no updates for a bit...

The sun sets and so does she. She climbs into her small bed and wraps all the covers she has around herself. The hydraulic stabilisers prevent the motorhome from rocking wildly in the wind.

The thunder rolls in along the shore. Every few seconds the motorhome lights up and the thunder cracks follow closer with each discharge.

She leaves her bed. Throws the door open and steps out into the storm. Raises her face to the skies and bares her teeth in answering fury.

She feels, and oh _god she feels_. Her knees kiss the mud and her tears stream, lost and mingling with the sky's own. She cries and she doesn't understand why, why _now_ , but she can't stop the heaving sobs. Her hands scrabble to find purchase in the waterlogged soil as she curls in on herself.

It is only when her teeth begin to chatter that she moves. Strips off her clothes. Showers. Goes to bed.

Does not sleep.


	67. Chapter 67

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this fic is just about 100,000 views over on ff.net. When I reach that milestone, I'm going to possibly attempt to draw something (a thing I haven't done in a very very long time). 
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER AND THE NEXT (FEW) (MAYBE): Descriptions of torture disguised as medical procedures.

The sun rises to a cloudless sky.

Rose does not care to see it. She stares at the wall of the motorhome, wrapped in duvets and blankets. Her hands still shake. She has long since run out of tears.

She stares at the white wall of the motorhome and remembers another. The hole in her chest she has carried with her for so many hundreds of years _burns_.

How naïve she was, she thinks, to imagine that was to be her greatest pain. She carried it with her in her youth, the separation, that one last sighting of him, "Rose Tyler, I -". She took it and she turned it into a determination that bordered on insanity. To get back to him.

She did. She got back to him. She _saved_ him. So he gave her himself. Not himself, himself, but another him, a human him. It wasn't him, but it was enough, and oh how they loved. They lived, they loved, they cherished one another. Not a day went by when they would not show it.

But she had stopped aging. As his hair grew silver and his face creased with laughter lines, hers did not, until it could no longer be ignored. She would outlive him.

She quit her job the next day. He made her promise to go on and live a glorious life once he was gone. She said she would. (She lied. She wouldn't live without him. Not again.) He'd smiled and wrapped her into his arms and kissed her breathless.

It was months later when they came and he was so _human_ now. Humans die. It's what they do best.

He was no exception.

She was shot, too. In the leg. Less fatal than through the forehead. A part of her still died that day.

And the next day.

And the next.

She was taken to the laboratories. The brightest minds were set to work. She was restrained when they weren't using her. For her own safety, of course. They fed her, washed her, clothed her. She could exist as an empty husk for a time.

Until Doctor Jensen arrived. She'd screamed her throat raw, that first day. Sobbed. Begged. He had watched her with mild grey eyes.

She never liked that colour anyway.


	68. Chapter 68

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! Songue has updated Smoke on the Water - The Untold Stories! with the most delightful chapter entitled May's Day. Go read it! (on FF.net)
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Descriptions of torture disguised as medical procedures. For those curious about the anatomy, explanations at the bottom. I hope I'm right. I think I am. I should be, I'm just about to have an exam on this shit! (ARGH!)

She must be dying, she decides. She must be dying and this is her life flashing before her eyes, except she has lived such a very long time and experienced so much that this must, by nature, take much longer than a few seconds.

It must take days.

They removed her left humerus. Fully extracted every muscle that inserted or originated on the bone. Scraped the glenoid fossa on her scapula clean of cartilage. Sliced away the collateral ligaments and left her radius and ulna. Closed her up.

She regrew it all.

They broke every bone in her left hand. Left her second metacarpal bone protruding through the skin.

She mended.

They injected a weak acid into the joint pouch of the femoroacetabular joint. They injected the other joint pouch with a weak base.

She healed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Humerus - upper arm bone.
> 
> Glenoid fossa - socket in the shoulder (in the scapula) where the head of the humerus sits.
> 
> Collateral ligaments - paired ligaments on the inside and outside of our elbow and knee joints (and maybe some others?) to help keep the bones above and below the joints together.
> 
> Radius and ulna - paired fore arm bones.
> 
> Second metacarpal - bone between wrist and first finger knuckle.
> 
> Femoroacetabular joint - hip - where the head of the femur (thigh bone) sits in our pelvis.
> 
> Joint pouch - fluid filled 'pouches' that sit within and sometimes around the joint. These are between bones to provide a very well lubricated surface for the bones to move against within a joint. They also lie between bone and tendon or ligament, if that tendon or ligament is going to be bending over a joint (like in our shoulders), or if they're going to run across a little jut of bone.


End file.
